


Tell me about a Complicated Man

by supercalifragilis



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Idiots in Love, Literary References & Allusions, Mutual Pining, Porn With Plot, Raven gets her due, The 100 (TV) Season 5, The 100 (TV) Season 6, The 100 (TV) Season 7 Speculation, The Odyssey References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 08:54:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23848534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercalifragilis/pseuds/supercalifragilis
Summary: Bellamy’s favorite book is the Iliad, and perhaps we don’t realize it, but season 5 and 6 (and hopefully 7) are very much his Odyssey. The title is the first line of the new translation of the Odyssey (by a woman, Emily Wilson), for the story of Bellamy coming back to Clarke, past the Iliad, the return of the hero, after the battle.There will be smut, eventually, be warned.Some flashbacks, some season 7 speculation, some scenes imagined from before that. This is mostly their relationship, but there is some plot in the background.“Tell me about a complicated man.Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lostwhen he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,and where he went, and who he met, the painhe suffered in the storms at sea, and howhe worked to save his life and bring his menback home.”
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 37





	Tell me about a Complicated Man

“Tell me about a complicated man.  
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost  
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,  
and where he went, and who he met, the pain  
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how  
he worked to save his life and bring his men  
back home.”

PENELOPE

Penelope

Clarke lay that night, in the quiet darkness of Sanctum, safe for the first time in weeks, months, years. Madi was fast asleep in the next room, her mind recovered. It seemed that after this last battle, they could be safe, but Clarke knew better. She had more than a century of experience in these sorts of things, and Sky People never achieved peace, no matter how hard she tried. She thought of Abby, and what she would want for them. Her mother had been a leader, and Clarke realized she owed that part of herself to her. She did not know whether it was a gift. Grief engulfed her.

He’d gone on to the anomaly with Echo, and she was left behind. It wasn’t the first time they were separated, but it felt different. She thought back to a time, a century ago, when he had wanted to find Octavia again, and she had been the one he had come to for that. She understood, truly. Bad timing and all that. The longing glances that she felt herself giving him since he had landed back on earth had not stopped after Josephine had left her body. It was worse now that he had single-handedly brought her back to life. She felt tethered to him, and he was tethered to someone else. She felt foolish for thinking of him, of that, when Abby was gone, and Madi had to be taken care of. In the darkness of her room, with the breeze coming from outside, she felt left behind, once more. When would he come back to her? 

Bellamy had ten thousand different expressions, and she had spent years studying them without being noticed. Sometimes, deep in the valley, as she listened to Madi’s quiet breathing at night, unable to sleep, she would close her eyes and mentally picture all of them, like a litany. The jerk smirk, the cocky grin, the fierce protective glare. Sure, sometimes, she would do the same for the others, for Abby, for Monty, even Murphy. But when she really needed soothing, it was Bellamy she saw. She had known then, that she didn’t simply call him because he was her co-leader. He was her person, had been for a while now. He was different, since the Ring. Softer, less rash in his decisions, quicker to give her that sweet smile that made her melt, that crinkled his eyes, even though he was someone else’s person now. She wasn’t an idiot, and she was nothing if not rational. Bellamy loved her, that was undeniable, and if she had guessed it before, she was sure of it now. But she reasoned that it was a solid, natural kind of love, grown out of guilt for leaving her behind and earnest friendship. She didn’t know what kind of love he had with Echo, but she saw no indication of tension. He was different, this new Bellamy who had a long, stable relationship. She had never known him to have one, curiously enough. 

Sometimes, she just wanted him, though. She wished, now, that she had declared herself earlier, back when she had first been attracted to him, the few times she had felt that he wanted her too. Perhaps they could have had something, if she hadn’t been so scared. And now here he was, the closest stranger. And she was scared to have lost him, without having ever had him. She thought, as always, of that passionate kiss she had witnessed between him and Echo. She had turned her eyes quickly, like she had been burnt. It was when she had realized that all this time, all these vain radio calls, she had expected that he’d come back to the ground, for her. That he’d kiss her. She understood, but she was angry, and sad. If this was peace in Sanctum, if they were to finally have some time to heal and stand still, she would have wanted them to be together, to be a family with Madi. 

So she was, after all, an idiot. It wasn’t like her to dwell on things, to imagine a better life, to long after Bellamy, who seemed happy with someone else. Especially as she was worried about what would happen in the Anomaly. She felt alone since they had landed on Sanctum. Since he had landed back on Earth. She had felt closer to him, somehow, when he was on the Ring and her down the valley. She was alone to deal with the aftermath of Madi’s trauma, and alone, too, surrounded by old friends who did not recognize her sacrifice. She wasn’t sure, in fact, that she still wanted them for friends. All she wanted was Bellamy, but the one from before the Ring. 

\--------

The first days on the Ring were long and dreadful. There was a lot to be done to make the Ring inhabitable, functional, but after their time on earth, all they wanted to do was sleep for five years. Monty took charge of the immediate concerns, their nutrition. Echo and Emori seemed restless but kind of excited, their first time in space, out of place grounders, but they wanted to be useful, they wanted to make the place theirs. It was Bellamy who was hit the hardest. He pushed every emotion down until the first culture of algae worked out. After that, when it was clear nobody would get sick, and Murphy had recovered from his coma, Bellamy took a look around the room and stood up. They all looked at him like they saw right through what he would be doing, something in his face telling them they wouldn’t be seeing him for a while, that this was the moment when he finally allowed himself to crash. He went to his room, sat down, and let himself be engulfed by darkness, by panic, by pain. She was dead, and he had abandoned her. 

It wasn’t that he had not fallen asleep with her face imprinted on his retina for the days they had been on the Ring, but he had put on his mask and been Bellamy, what they expected of him. Now, in the few square feet that he had claimed, he could not escape her. He thought of all the times he had held her, and they felt like such a small amount, he could count them on the fingers of one hand. 

Sometimes, he would feel his heart break, and wonder how it was possible to feel such yearning for someone who had never been his. Whom he had been so careful never to touch in a way that could be too much. Everything always had felt like too much with her. He never left her side, if he could help it, as soon as she had told him she needed him, all this time ago. The first person to need him since Octavia, the first person to need him when they could have chosen to depend on anyone else. He recognized that now, that he had been hers that very minute, perhaps even before. But he never came too close, afraid to get burned, like Icarus, afraid that she didn’t need him that much. He had never let himself even try. For as long as he could remember, he had wanted Clarke as much as he had respected her. But love, that had been gradual, like every time she did something to make him fall harder, he actually was rising up, closer to the sun. Now here he was, up in space again, darkness all around. 

A few months later, his mourning had turned into a long introspective process; for as much as it hurt, he wanted to remember all the ways in which he had fallen in love with her. He would lie in his bed in the dark, or look out into the Earth, still burning, and he would let the rage, the guilt slowly oozed out as he remembered the quiet moment when she had killed Atom when he couldn’t. How he couldn’t take his eyes away from her then, and never could after that. She had been stronger than him then, already. That train of thought always took him to the same, unraveling vertigo of a conclusion: she had not deserved to die. She had been good from the start, the natural princess, while he had been a monster searching for redemption. Even up here, even without her, the reflexes were there: he owed it to her not to think that about himself. She had seen the good in him, and he would push through and be better. In what crazy world did the princess die and the knight live? 

He’d always taken his cues from her, relationship-wise. He could see that now. The trauma of Mount Weather, which could have brought them together, would definitely have brought them together, if she had stayed. In another life, he hoped that it did. That he found the words to convince her to come inside with him, and to never leave him ever again. But he had not. 

He wakes up from a restless sleep to a voice and soft knocking on his door, “Bellamy, it’s me, Monty.” He sounds insistent but caring, and Bellamy lets himself open the door. They’ve never been the talking type before, or then again, perhaps it was him who had never been. But he had decided that their time on the Ring was to be put to good use, so that Clarke would not have died in vain. Trying to be better meant talking, it meant being the heart in more ways than Clarke had implied, not only to inspire others, whatever that had meant, but also to have empathy, to have relationships. Monty comes in hesitantly, and he gestures for him to sit in a little couch that is there.  
“How are you?”  
“Please, Monty, if you’ve come here to make me talk about her, I don’t think I can.”  
“I asked about you,” he answered. “But that’s exactly it, isn’t it.”  
“What the hell do you mean?”  
“You’re devastated, more than all of us are. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to at least acknowledge why? To owe it to her?”  
Bellamy swallowed, the silence heavy between them.   
“How long have you known?”, he asked darkly.   
“I suspected it for a while, even back at the dropship. You just… hovered, and not like with Octavia. But I knew for sure after you found her with Roan. I didn’t know if you did, though.”  
Bellamy looked down. “Looking back, I don’t think there was a moment I did not know. But there was never time.”  
Monty didn’t say anything. That was the good thing, the best thing, with Monty. He knew when to push, and when to stop. They just sat in silence for a long while, and then Monty stood up, and asked him if he wanted to come to dinner with him, and for some reason, Bellamy didn’t find it in him to say no. 

Two years in, it’s Raven who comes after he locks himself for two weeks into his four walls. At this point, it’s like they take turns. They’ve never discussed this, never Clarke, but he saw her knowing looks long before he had admitted it to himself, and that had been enough to avoid her.   
“Don’t worry”, she drawls, “I didn’t come here to jump you or anything. I know once was enough.”  
He chuckles, remembering her baring herself in his tent. Truth was, he had done it as much because he was upset for the very same reason, for Finn and Clarke still loving each other, or whatever that was.   
“I know, Bellamy.”  
“You know what.”  
“I know that I wasn’t the only one upset that day. That we went looking for them into each other.”  
He hummed, he had no answer for that, and scratched his beard for good measure, the beard he’d grown perhaps wanting to feel more like a hermit. He didn’t recognize himself, with or without it, so it didn’t really matter.   
Raven sat down. “Do you think she knew how much you…cared?”  
“What was the point. There was never time.”  
“There was time for Gina. For Lexa.”  
“Raven, I don’t want to be an asshole, but please don’t come here and tell me how to mourn. It’s not like you mourned Finn in healthy way.”  
“No. I think I just needed to see you accept it for yourself. Maybe it could help.”  
“Accept what?”  
“That she was your person.”  
The past tense still hurts, a sharp pain, reheated every time someone seems to use it easily around her, when it’s so, so hard to imagine her anything else than alive. They stare at the wall in front of them. He clears his throat: “So you’re saying there won’t be others, for us.”  
“I doubt it. They were too… bright, for us. Or we are too damaged. But once you accept that, there’s something.”  
“Like what.”  
“Whatever comes next.”  
“Are you a mechanic or a philosopher?”  
“Oh no, the humanities are yours to wreak. I’m just here to ask you to come to the bridge. We’re raising a glass to her.”


End file.
